III. Research Paper
The second stage will be to develop the legal, social and normative perspectives of the family-oriented legal issue into a final research paper of 2000-2500 words, using OSCOLA citation and referencing guidelines. The research paper will account for 25% of the overall course grade.
The research paper must include all three perspectives of the course – legal, social and normative. When writing the paper, some questions to consider are: 1) Does the paper present a clear and focused context of the problem? 2) How well does the paper address the legal, social and normative aspects of the issue? 3) Is the writing of suitable quality (including correct language usage, organized structure, and clear reasoning and analyses)? 4) Is the paper supported by persuasive authority with sufficient attribution of sources? 5) How well was the research and writing process executed?
Instructions for Research Paper and Topic Proposal, continued
Structure of research paper. When designing your research and writing your paper, structure is an important consideration. A logical structure is needed to convey information and arguments coherently and persuasively. For this particular assignment, a well-prepared paper will have at least the following essential components:
1. Introduction: Frame the topic. What topic will the paper address? How does the topic fit into the broader subject of families/family law? Why is the topic worthy of investigation? What is the purpose of the paper? What questions related to the topic will the paper seek to answer?
2. Main body:
a. Social perspective (the “problem”) b. Legalperspective
c. Normativeperspective
– Everything in subsections a., b. and c. should directly relate to your topic. Use a narrow topic to keep your paper focused and structured.
3. Conclusion: This should be more than just a “this is what I said above” section. It should reflect on your conclusions and briefly discuss their implications.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.